The Toronto Blue Jays signed left-hander Ricky Romero to a five-year, $30.1 million contract extension Saturday. The 25-year-old Romero is the second player rookie general manager Alex Anthopoulos has locked up with a long-term deal.

David Ortiz hit two homers in the same stadium where he won the Home Run Derby nearly two weeks ago, and Clay Buchholz pitched seven strong innings in the Boston Red Sox's 6-3 victory over Dan Haren and the slumping Los Angeles Angels on Monday night.

The Diamondbacks are on the clock. One year before the All-Star Game comes to Phoenix for the first time, a contingent of roughly 50 local officials, including a group of about 30 Diamondbacks employees, canvassed Anaheim the past several days.

You want All-Stars? We've got All-Stars.Not the celebrity faces of baseball, now back in their own clubhouses, returned to their regular-season fame. But the citizen heroes who were introduced in Angel Stadium, now returned to the obscurity and hard work of their lives.

You've seen the perfect games in the first half of the season. You've seen all the zeroes put up by young, strong, fearless men on the mound. As New York Yankees manager Joe Girardi observed, "It's the time of the pitcher."